"I wish I knew then, What I know now, Wouldn't dive in, Wouldn't bow down, Gravity hurts, You made it so sweet, Till I woke up on, On the concrete"
- 'Wide Awake' - Katy Perry
'Teenage Dream: The Complete Confection' I believe is the second album in this list that is a second edition, there is at least two others to come in this list that share this trait. Whenever an album is released, all the tracks tend to fit a theme, but for the sake of brevity and also sometimes because of technical limitations, things often get cut. Future albums don't often share the theme, and the artist goes in a different direction with their work. From time to time it is worthwhile to reissue albums with tracks added to them that fit the narrative or the theme that existed. This issue of Teenage Dream justifies that if not for any other reason but for the addition of 'Wide Awake' and 'Part Of Me' more than anything.
Wide Awake is my favourite Katy Perry track, both for the music and for the lyrics. This issue of the album was released in 2012 a year where my world figuratively came to an end. A lot of things fell apart for me that year, friendships fell apart, conflict arose, and a love was lost because of poison in my ear - that's cryptic I know and very Shakespearean but this is a story I'm not willing to tell publicly for so many reasons. Wide Awake serves as a reminder for me of that time when I fell back down to Earth with a thud. That sense of loss was amplified by 'The One That Got Away' a song that literally made me cry because of the chord it struck, and the nerve it hit.
I was 24 in 2012, which for most people is a time when their life is moving forward, where their turbulent teenage years are behind them. For me though, given the trauma of my childhood that I alluded to, my adolescence was essentially delayed for lack of a better descriptor. The years I spent in University from 2006 through 2009 and the years that followed graduation for me marked a time when I developed most of the social skills that people my own age had developed a decade before. I learned a lot in those years and what I learned helped shape who I am now but I think of those years more as "growing down" than "growing up" in that I receded into behaviours that I'm once again growing out of now years later but came at the worst possible time. Those years are meant to be when you build the foundation for your life and what you will do with it, but I had no clue what I wanted to do with my life and even today I am still uncertain but I at least think I am better able to identify what I want and what I don't, even if the former is still much harder than the latter.
Katy Perry is often considered by people to be a pop artist who makes music with little substance, I think this judgement is unfounded. Teenage Dream is an album that like the title suggests needs a teenage mindset to understand the depth of the lyrics and what they mean. Even now I know that people still roll their eyes when you describe her as deep and that's okay that derision is an indicator of cynicism something that you develop with age, which side of this debate you fall on is a clear marker for how seriously you take yourself, your life, and how old before your time you have become.
On a more light-hearted note this album also includes 'Firework' a track that serves a particular purpose for me in that it was the reason I discovered a guy named Peter Lee Johnson a guy from Seattle who created a Youtube channel where he uploaded videos of him playing Violin. One particular video saw him perform a violin cover of Firework. If you haven't figured out by now from this and previous posts the violin is one of my favourite musical instruments and I am astounded by anyone who can play it well. I find it not only sounds beautiful but it also looks beautiful too. Peter posted a number of videos on his channel, he still does; another particular favourite of mine is a mash-up video that fuses Bach with Taio Cruz's 'Dynamite' which I still listen to from time to time when I want something that will make me smile.
I've followed Katy Perry's career since 2012, I hadn't paid much attention to her work prior to the release of The Complete Confection which is yet another reason why I think the reissue was justified as I am an example of a consumer that might not have connected with her music to the extent I did if it weren't for that particular combination of tracks. Indeed, there is another album on this list that I will discuss when the time comes but it shares this trait and again I think it was justified, as for those that criticise reissue albums for the sparsity of new content, no-one is forcing you to buy every single album an artist puts out, you can buy individual tracks through Amazon, Apple Music, and you can listen to tracks through Spotify without having to buy a whole album, I don't get the anger people have in this regard - it would be different if the tracks were exclusive to that release and could not be bought or accessed elsewhere.
The Gift
For in this life we give to greed
All of that we think we need
In hope that treasures to us received
Will not leave our hearts much aggrieved
Gifts we expect to take in turn
For what we give and take in churn
That word of meaning was once sincere
A word of love not one of fear
To gift is to give not to take in kind
No return you should ever expect to find
A token of love to adoring friends
Or a sign of peace to make amends
All of that we think we need
In hope that treasures to us received
Will not leave our hearts much aggrieved
Gifts we expect to take in turn
For what we give and take in churn
That word of meaning was once sincere
A word of love not one of fear
To gift is to give not to take in kind
No return you should ever expect to find
A token of love to adoring friends
Or a sign of peace to make amends
Dance With Me
Take my hand and dance with me
Let the music lift your heart so free
Move your body with rhythm and rhyme
And let your spirit flow through time
Twist and turn and smile with glee
Here in this moment just let yourself be
Forget your cares and experience joy
Don't hold back there's no need to be coy
To live is to dance and to dance is to live
For shame is the guilt that makes us feel coy
It denies us those moments where we can feel joy
So here in this moment just let yourself be
Live in the moment and smile with glee
Twist and turn and step with me in time
And together we'll move with rhythm and rhyme
Music is the sword that will set your heart free
So here in this moment won't you dance with me
Let the music lift your heart so free
Move your body with rhythm and rhyme
And let your spirit flow through time
Twist and turn and smile with glee
Here in this moment just let yourself be
Forget your cares and experience joy
Don't hold back there's no need to be coy
To live is to dance and to dance is to live
For shame is the guilt that makes us feel coy
It denies us those moments where we can feel joy
So here in this moment just let yourself be
Live in the moment and smile with glee
Twist and turn and step with me in time
And together we'll move with rhythm and rhyme
Music is the sword that will set your heart free
So here in this moment won't you dance with me
Music Monday #12: Beautiful Soul by Jesse McCartney
'Beautiful Soul' is an album by Jesse McCartney that was released in 2004 but it wasn't until 2007 that I became aware of him or his work. I was at the tail end of my first year of University at the time and my circle of friends was expanding once more and yet again Music was the tool I used to form bonds with people and explore their interests. Not for the first time I met a girl at University who had a music collection filled with artists I had never heard of and yet again I dived right in and started to explore. Even then I didn't pick out Jesse from the list because there was so much to choose from. It wasn't until a conversation about the singers we had crushes on over the years cropped up and I mentioned having a crush on Aaron Carter in my teenage years that Jesse was mentioned and it went from there.
My American readers have probably heard of Jesse even if they didn't follow his music career they probably know him from 'All My Children' a popular daytime soap in the 90s but for context, both his music career and the soap he acted in were pretty much unknown here in the UK, indeed even today those that have heard of him probably know him for his voice acting as Roxas and Ventus in Kingdom Hearts. His music career is often overlooked here in the UK, this album for instance peaked at number 53 in the UK charts so his music career didn't get very far here, as for the soap to my knowledge that was never syndicated on UK television. I've written before about this forgotten history and the fact that "new" and "new to me" are two very different concepts yet they embody much of the same experiences. There are a wealth of artists that have enjoyed success in the US but are unknown in the UK and vice versa, and a wealth of TV shows and an abundance of content from years gone by that we never got to see, and for the most part even now with the internet there's no real service you can use to explore that content. Spotify has problems when it comes to popping bubbles and as for streaming services for TV shows, if they aren't current then they are pretty much resigned to history.
This serves once more as a reason why curators are needed, people who can say if you like this then you might like that. That's how I discovered Jesse and when I explored his music it struck a chord with me because at the time I was crushing pretty hard on yet another guy, an infatuation that ultimately led nowhere but nevertheless the title track 'Beautiful Soul' and another track in particular, 'Because You Live' serve as reminders for me now of how I felt for him. I even fell for Jesse himself for a while and still hold a flame.
Jesse's music represents a journey down memory lane for me, I don't listen to it that much any more but whenever I want to reminisce and reflect on that time in my life I listen to this album. I followed Jesse's career for a few years after discovering him, an honourable mention here goes to his 'Departure: Recharged' album in particular to the 'Body Language' track on there which is probably my most played track of his in my music library. I dropped off a few years later however when his musical styling shifted focus and no longer appealed to me. Beautiful Soul still holds a place in my heart though and it will remain in my music library even if I don't listen to it that often it holds emotion and memories that still mean a lot to me.
My American readers have probably heard of Jesse even if they didn't follow his music career they probably know him from 'All My Children' a popular daytime soap in the 90s but for context, both his music career and the soap he acted in were pretty much unknown here in the UK, indeed even today those that have heard of him probably know him for his voice acting as Roxas and Ventus in Kingdom Hearts. His music career is often overlooked here in the UK, this album for instance peaked at number 53 in the UK charts so his music career didn't get very far here, as for the soap to my knowledge that was never syndicated on UK television. I've written before about this forgotten history and the fact that "new" and "new to me" are two very different concepts yet they embody much of the same experiences. There are a wealth of artists that have enjoyed success in the US but are unknown in the UK and vice versa, and a wealth of TV shows and an abundance of content from years gone by that we never got to see, and for the most part even now with the internet there's no real service you can use to explore that content. Spotify has problems when it comes to popping bubbles and as for streaming services for TV shows, if they aren't current then they are pretty much resigned to history.
This serves once more as a reason why curators are needed, people who can say if you like this then you might like that. That's how I discovered Jesse and when I explored his music it struck a chord with me because at the time I was crushing pretty hard on yet another guy, an infatuation that ultimately led nowhere but nevertheless the title track 'Beautiful Soul' and another track in particular, 'Because You Live' serve as reminders for me now of how I felt for him. I even fell for Jesse himself for a while and still hold a flame.
Jesse's music represents a journey down memory lane for me, I don't listen to it that much any more but whenever I want to reminisce and reflect on that time in my life I listen to this album. I followed Jesse's career for a few years after discovering him, an honourable mention here goes to his 'Departure: Recharged' album in particular to the 'Body Language' track on there which is probably my most played track of his in my music library. I dropped off a few years later however when his musical styling shifted focus and no longer appealed to me. Beautiful Soul still holds a place in my heart though and it will remain in my music library even if I don't listen to it that often it holds emotion and memories that still mean a lot to me.
Desire
Look back on the days that have now gone by
But do not feel pain or sit and cry
For the magic of youth is something to behold
But the hands of time are not as they appear so cold
The magic that was lost was not cast aside
But buried instead deep down inside
Bring it to light and the innocence you knew
Can once again rise and shine so true
Age is a number and a state of mind
For of the latter you can once again find
Take the chains of knowledge and wisdom you earned
And remember that which was never learned
Innocence and ignorance have beauty within
But the latter we're taught is nought but sin
But they are one and the same you see
Accept this truth and once again be free
But do not feel pain or sit and cry
For the magic of youth is something to behold
But the hands of time are not as they appear so cold
The magic that was lost was not cast aside
But buried instead deep down inside
Bring it to light and the innocence you knew
Can once again rise and shine so true
Age is a number and a state of mind
For of the latter you can once again find
Take the chains of knowledge and wisdom you earned
And remember that which was never learned
Innocence and ignorance have beauty within
But the latter we're taught is nought but sin
But they are one and the same you see
Accept this truth and once again be free
Express Yourself
Roll the dice and play the game
For love or money or perhaps fame
Run in the race of the lives we live
And give yourself all you have to give
The past is behind you beyond your reach
With the future ahead for you to beseech
But the present is the moment in which you reside
Where your hopes and dreams move with you in tide
Remember to breathe and stay afloat
Let your heart beat loud as you emote
While feelings you have are strong and true
Until expressed they reside only in you
Let the world see what lies buried within so deep
Only then perhaps its pace you can hope to keep
For love or money or perhaps fame
Run in the race of the lives we live
And give yourself all you have to give
The past is behind you beyond your reach
With the future ahead for you to beseech
But the present is the moment in which you reside
Where your hopes and dreams move with you in tide
Remember to breathe and stay afloat
Let your heart beat loud as you emote
While feelings you have are strong and true
Until expressed they reside only in you
Let the world see what lies buried within so deep
Only then perhaps its pace you can hope to keep
Hope
Close your eyes and look inside
Find the hope that you like to hide
Take it by the hand and bring it to light
Defend its heart from those who fight
Let it gaze upon the state of the world
Until the tangled knots of despair be unfurled
For there in the light there is more to see
Than what appears at first to you and me
There is joy and happiness to be found
But not by a shrill and deafening sound
The whisper of hope can be hard to hear
For the words to echo you must hold it near
For even in darkness the light still survives
Ready to return once more to our lives
Find the hope that you like to hide
Take it by the hand and bring it to light
Defend its heart from those who fight
Let it gaze upon the state of the world
Until the tangled knots of despair be unfurled
For there in the light there is more to see
Than what appears at first to you and me
There is joy and happiness to be found
But not by a shrill and deafening sound
The whisper of hope can be hard to hear
For the words to echo you must hold it near
For even in darkness the light still survives
Ready to return once more to our lives
Music Monday #11: The Greatest Hits of Cher
If there was a training course that taught people how to be gay, in all the stereotypical senses that would entail, then Madonna and Cher would most certainly be artists that would have entire modules devoted to their work. I can't remember how old I was when I first discovered Cher or her music, but all I remember is knowing that she was an artist that people automatically assumed if you were a guy and you listened to her then you were gay. I grew up in a very working class community, attending all-male schools for the first 12 years of my education, there wasn't much room for diversity or tolerating anything that didn't conform to toxic notions of what made someone straight, male, and "normal" although I hate using that word in this context because of the vitriol attached to the idea of conflating normality with a given sexuality.
What I did realise quite early was that certain artists I would have to appreciate from a distance and Cher was one of those artists, keeping the secret that I liked her and her music was like keeping the secret of my sexuality, if my closet really existed then the Cher CDs we owned would have been in there with me. 'The Greatest Hits' of Cher, one of many that have been released but this one in particular was released in 1999, I was 11 years old, the decade, and the millennium were coming to an end. We also moved house for the first time, something we would go on to do several other times when I was growing up but this was the first major change for me.
I had just started High School having attended it for three months when this album was released. I had a mentality that was hopeful at the time because there was a sense of new beginnings and abandoning the burdens that I had been carrying over for years prior. I realise for some to think that an 11 year old can hold burdens is melodramatic but this was after a very traumatic experience that would go on to cause PTSD later in life and still leaves me with issues that I have never truly been able to resolve. To say that my childhood and teenage years were disrupted is an understatement, my parents never knew just to what extent that reached and in many ways they still don't, but they knew the environment I was living in was not healthy, even if they didn't understand the reasons why, and they did the best they could for me, things might have been different had they known everything I was going through but I can't change the past so there's no point dwelling on that now.
At age 11, 'Believe' a song about moving on and leaving toxic people behind, 'If I Could Turn Back Time' a song about going back and changing your mistakes to make things right, 'Heart of Stone' a song about how easy life would be if you could just not feel anything at all and be heartless, 'Strong Enough' a song about finding strength within yourself to be move on and live your life, these songs all fit the narrative that existed in my head, the feelings that I had, and the internal conflict I was dealing with.
On a lighter note this album also included 'Dov'è l'amore' another example of music that incorporated lyrics that weren't in English which really appealed to me and led me for a while to learn to speak Italian, that didn't last long though as the learning curve was too steep for me, but it did lay the groundwork for my pursuit of another romance language a few years later as mentioned in my post about Celine Dion's 'A New Day Has Come' - and yes Celine Dion was another singer I was acutely aware that people would assume you were gay if you as a teenage boy openly showed interest in. I should point out these assertions are made in respect of stereotypes, what music you like and what artists you love doesn't determine your sexuality, this was just the reality of the environment I grew up in.
Surprisingly, this is the only Cher album that actually features on this list for the simple fact that her career since then for me has mostly been marked by singles and the album itself sums up a few decades of her career up until that point which again if I had included individual albums would have dominated this list.
What I did realise quite early was that certain artists I would have to appreciate from a distance and Cher was one of those artists, keeping the secret that I liked her and her music was like keeping the secret of my sexuality, if my closet really existed then the Cher CDs we owned would have been in there with me. 'The Greatest Hits' of Cher, one of many that have been released but this one in particular was released in 1999, I was 11 years old, the decade, and the millennium were coming to an end. We also moved house for the first time, something we would go on to do several other times when I was growing up but this was the first major change for me.
I had just started High School having attended it for three months when this album was released. I had a mentality that was hopeful at the time because there was a sense of new beginnings and abandoning the burdens that I had been carrying over for years prior. I realise for some to think that an 11 year old can hold burdens is melodramatic but this was after a very traumatic experience that would go on to cause PTSD later in life and still leaves me with issues that I have never truly been able to resolve. To say that my childhood and teenage years were disrupted is an understatement, my parents never knew just to what extent that reached and in many ways they still don't, but they knew the environment I was living in was not healthy, even if they didn't understand the reasons why, and they did the best they could for me, things might have been different had they known everything I was going through but I can't change the past so there's no point dwelling on that now.
At age 11, 'Believe' a song about moving on and leaving toxic people behind, 'If I Could Turn Back Time' a song about going back and changing your mistakes to make things right, 'Heart of Stone' a song about how easy life would be if you could just not feel anything at all and be heartless, 'Strong Enough' a song about finding strength within yourself to be move on and live your life, these songs all fit the narrative that existed in my head, the feelings that I had, and the internal conflict I was dealing with.
On a lighter note this album also included 'Dov'è l'amore' another example of music that incorporated lyrics that weren't in English which really appealed to me and led me for a while to learn to speak Italian, that didn't last long though as the learning curve was too steep for me, but it did lay the groundwork for my pursuit of another romance language a few years later as mentioned in my post about Celine Dion's 'A New Day Has Come' - and yes Celine Dion was another singer I was acutely aware that people would assume you were gay if you as a teenage boy openly showed interest in. I should point out these assertions are made in respect of stereotypes, what music you like and what artists you love doesn't determine your sexuality, this was just the reality of the environment I grew up in.
Surprisingly, this is the only Cher album that actually features on this list for the simple fact that her career since then for me has mostly been marked by singles and the album itself sums up a few decades of her career up until that point which again if I had included individual albums would have dominated this list.
Unreality
I like the concept of reality television, in terms of showing something that actually reflects reality but this isn't the case with most reality TV shows because they have to be entertaining to be considered appealing and as a result the behaviours you see are accentuated or parody versions of reality. This creates a lot of problems when people base their real life expectations on what they have seen on television.
In much the same way when we think about porn we should be able to recognise that what we see in pornography is a fantasy, a depiction intended to excite and arouse, not a depiction intended to reflect reality. Where sex education and sexual exploration is left to be guided by porn alone this can cause a lot of problems that most people instinctively understand. Entertaining this scenario even now you are probably imagining the plethora of problems a sexual education based on porn would create, and yet when we turn our attention to reality television we aren't as critical it seems. There's a greater eagerness to believe what is depicted is accurate in this scenario, despite the fact that these productions are edited and produced with the same intent of providing entertainment more than reflecting reality.
I like the concept of reality television but I don't think it actually exists, at least not in a form that stays true to the concept. This in many regards is quite like communism in that the theory would work if adhered to but no attempt to create such a system has ever stayed true to the theory and inevitably diverges and becomes corrupt. Nothing within the realm of media ever stays pure, production and editorial decisions mutate the original vision until the end product is something entirely different.
This mutative process is one reason why I choose to self-publish most of my work, to retain artistic control free from outside influence. Would my published works do better if I were to give in and adhere to that process, probably, but what would be published as a result I would not consider to be "my" work if it did not resemble my vision. I am no Da Vinci, but I find myself entertaining the idea of a modern day Leonardo painting the Mona Lisa only to have it scanned, photoshopped, and reprinted to make it look more appealing to the consumer.
This coercive creative process as it could be termed is one reason why I am drawn to Youtubers whose channels are more "raw" in terms of creating content where the mistakes are left in, frustrations are accurately depicted, and a truer representation of the content creator is captured. This I believe is also one of the reasons people find streaming so appealing, in that a stream is a raw feed from a creator that is unedited and uncensored. Those channels that minimise production and editing, and those channels that stream their content live are both filling the need for reality that was supposed to be fed by reality television, it is perhaps most telling that neither of these would be embraced by traditional media and promoted to the same extent as their traditional content is treated.
By refusing to create content for reality television shows that was in fact real and true to life, those networks missed their opportunity to capitalise on these desires, youtube and streaming services won out in the end because they were willing to allow user submitted content to be delivered relinquishing all control over the creative process deferring it to the creators. Arguably this is one reason why Youtube specifically has an existential threat hanging over it, the Youtube Partner Programme has become too invasive, creating too many restrictions that are influencing the creative process, it is ironic that a service that set out to be independent and set out to challenge mainstream media is now becoming more akin to mainstream media as the latter has been in decline.
The strategy most traditional media outlets seem to pursue now is to create content that is further detached from reality, either by purporting to be real but amplifying and exaggerating the content in the extreme, or by openly embracing the surreal and fantasy elements by creating TV shows that incorporate visual effects and landscapes that amateur content creators on Youtube can't rival on the same scale - for now at least, the bar for this content has been rising on Youtube.
If those who cannot distinguish what is real and what is not real continue to be influenced by reality television shows that diverge further and further from reality with each episode, what impact does that have on the wider world? If reality television creates expectations for viewers that their lives should reflect those unrealistic story-lines how long does it take before they start to behave in ways in their own lives in an attempt to mimic what they see?
"People like that don't exist" - "but they will after they see this"
Or as Oscar Wilde once said, "Life imitates Art far more than Art imitates Life"
In much the same way when we think about porn we should be able to recognise that what we see in pornography is a fantasy, a depiction intended to excite and arouse, not a depiction intended to reflect reality. Where sex education and sexual exploration is left to be guided by porn alone this can cause a lot of problems that most people instinctively understand. Entertaining this scenario even now you are probably imagining the plethora of problems a sexual education based on porn would create, and yet when we turn our attention to reality television we aren't as critical it seems. There's a greater eagerness to believe what is depicted is accurate in this scenario, despite the fact that these productions are edited and produced with the same intent of providing entertainment more than reflecting reality.
I like the concept of reality television but I don't think it actually exists, at least not in a form that stays true to the concept. This in many regards is quite like communism in that the theory would work if adhered to but no attempt to create such a system has ever stayed true to the theory and inevitably diverges and becomes corrupt. Nothing within the realm of media ever stays pure, production and editorial decisions mutate the original vision until the end product is something entirely different.
This mutative process is one reason why I choose to self-publish most of my work, to retain artistic control free from outside influence. Would my published works do better if I were to give in and adhere to that process, probably, but what would be published as a result I would not consider to be "my" work if it did not resemble my vision. I am no Da Vinci, but I find myself entertaining the idea of a modern day Leonardo painting the Mona Lisa only to have it scanned, photoshopped, and reprinted to make it look more appealing to the consumer.
This coercive creative process as it could be termed is one reason why I am drawn to Youtubers whose channels are more "raw" in terms of creating content where the mistakes are left in, frustrations are accurately depicted, and a truer representation of the content creator is captured. This I believe is also one of the reasons people find streaming so appealing, in that a stream is a raw feed from a creator that is unedited and uncensored. Those channels that minimise production and editing, and those channels that stream their content live are both filling the need for reality that was supposed to be fed by reality television, it is perhaps most telling that neither of these would be embraced by traditional media and promoted to the same extent as their traditional content is treated.
By refusing to create content for reality television shows that was in fact real and true to life, those networks missed their opportunity to capitalise on these desires, youtube and streaming services won out in the end because they were willing to allow user submitted content to be delivered relinquishing all control over the creative process deferring it to the creators. Arguably this is one reason why Youtube specifically has an existential threat hanging over it, the Youtube Partner Programme has become too invasive, creating too many restrictions that are influencing the creative process, it is ironic that a service that set out to be independent and set out to challenge mainstream media is now becoming more akin to mainstream media as the latter has been in decline.
The strategy most traditional media outlets seem to pursue now is to create content that is further detached from reality, either by purporting to be real but amplifying and exaggerating the content in the extreme, or by openly embracing the surreal and fantasy elements by creating TV shows that incorporate visual effects and landscapes that amateur content creators on Youtube can't rival on the same scale - for now at least, the bar for this content has been rising on Youtube.
If those who cannot distinguish what is real and what is not real continue to be influenced by reality television shows that diverge further and further from reality with each episode, what impact does that have on the wider world? If reality television creates expectations for viewers that their lives should reflect those unrealistic story-lines how long does it take before they start to behave in ways in their own lives in an attempt to mimic what they see?
"People like that don't exist" - "but they will after they see this"
Or as Oscar Wilde once said, "Life imitates Art far more than Art imitates Life"
Pessimism And Optimism Revisited
Let me ask you two questions, first, what is your greatest achievement and second, what is your greatest failure? Take a moment to think about these questions and come up with an answer before you read on.
Whatever the answers were that you came up with for the most part are irrelevant, those questions were not asked to praise or belittle those extremes but rather to position you to answer a third question - which question was easier to answer? The answer to this question reveals more about you than the answers you gave to the first two because the answer to this question is a good indicator of whether you are an optimist or a pessimist.
For the longest time I accepted the definition of optimism and pessimism as being a person in the former who expects the best outcome and a person in the latter being someone who expects the worst outcome. I even dedicated several posts over the years to this subject and the distinction between the two, but recently I've come to define these two terms in a different way.
What I have come to realise is that optimism and pessimism can actually be defined more succinctly in terms of happiness, or to be more precise, where your happiest moment in your life will be. An optimist projects their happiest moment to be in the future, not yet achieved, something to work towards whereas a pessimist holds happiness in retrospect, deeming their happiest moment to be in their past. That doesn't mean that a pessimist is incapable of achieving greater moments of happiness but simply that they do not expect to have those experiences and that any new experience which will become their happiest moment won't be recognised as such until after that experience has taken place.
You could also infer from this that an optimist lives for the future, and that a pessimist lives in the past, but then who lives in the present? Surprisingly I think the answer to that question is the cynic because cynicism is by definition a method of interpreting the world in the moment based on prejudice and scepticism or to put it more bluntly they judge the world constantly. These three philosophical concepts whilst they may seem rigid should be recognised as negative by their definition, which at first might provoke disbelief, the idea of optimism being inherently negative seems like an oxymoron at first but when you frame it in the context of your consciousness it becomes apparent that optimism is a distraction as much as pessimism and cynicism are because all three are about displacing your consciousness. You are removed from the present and placed into a third person perspective in all three cases, one looking to the past, one to the present, and one to the future.
This raises the question of scales, if we believe that every action has an equal and opposite reaction then we can create a scale for every action that bridges the two, even if this scale only permits two values of 1 and -1. You then have to take each of these concepts and consider what their true opposites are if not those we have already outlined.
If we define pessimism as finding your happiest moment in your past, then finding your most unhappiest moment there too could arguably be defined as the opposing concept, there is no word that exists to specifically identify this behaviour so I am taking a word here that means something else but fits the narrative I have created, that word is 'traumatism' where the existing definition refers the development of trauma, in this context I am extending that definition to include the act of identifying moments as traumatic.
If we define cynicism as the displacement of the consciousness in the moment causing us to judge the experience rather than experience it for ourselves, then the opposing concept here would be the act of living in the moment without thinking about it - in psychology this is referred to as mindfulness or raising your awareness. Again to fit the narrative I have created, the word I would use to describe this mentality would be 'sporadicism' which I would define quite close to sporadism and sporadicity which are adjectives used to describe someone or something that is sporadic and unpredictable.
That leaves the future perspective, where optimism is the act of defining your happiest moment as something yet to occur, the opposite here would be defining your darkest moment as something yet to occur which again has a word used to describe it, 'neuroticism' which in turn serves as an identifier for most psychologists of the likelihood that certain disorders may develop that are associated with increasingly negative outlooks on the world, sometimes caused by cognitive processes and sometimes caused by neurological conditions.
To summarise:
Past:
Pessimism - your happiest moment is behind you
Traumatism - your worst moment happened in your past
Present:
Cynicism - judging the world and displacing your consciousness from it
Sporadicism - living in the moment without thinking about it at all
Future:
Optimisim - your happiest moment is yet to come
Neuroticism - your worst moment is yet to come
What I have realised through developing this classification system is that cynicism creates negative experiences which reinforce trauma and increase the likelihood of developing neurotic tendencies, and that sporadicism creates a mixture or positive and negative experiences which can rebalance your time-line. The more positive experiences that are created in the moment that in turn contribute to your past as you create it, lessen the impact and the magnitude of trauma reducing the likelihood of developing neurotic tendencies and creating space for optimism.
Ultimately the present is the only one of the three periods of time you can actually control, the divide between pessimism and optimism is therefore irrelevant. The only relevant question is whether you want to judge the present or engage with it, whichever you choose will feed your inclination towards pessimism or optimism in the long run, so whilst you can't abandon a pessimist or optimist mentality completely in the moment, you can steer yourself down a path that will eventually change that mentality.
Whatever the answers were that you came up with for the most part are irrelevant, those questions were not asked to praise or belittle those extremes but rather to position you to answer a third question - which question was easier to answer? The answer to this question reveals more about you than the answers you gave to the first two because the answer to this question is a good indicator of whether you are an optimist or a pessimist.
For the longest time I accepted the definition of optimism and pessimism as being a person in the former who expects the best outcome and a person in the latter being someone who expects the worst outcome. I even dedicated several posts over the years to this subject and the distinction between the two, but recently I've come to define these two terms in a different way.
What I have come to realise is that optimism and pessimism can actually be defined more succinctly in terms of happiness, or to be more precise, where your happiest moment in your life will be. An optimist projects their happiest moment to be in the future, not yet achieved, something to work towards whereas a pessimist holds happiness in retrospect, deeming their happiest moment to be in their past. That doesn't mean that a pessimist is incapable of achieving greater moments of happiness but simply that they do not expect to have those experiences and that any new experience which will become their happiest moment won't be recognised as such until after that experience has taken place.
You could also infer from this that an optimist lives for the future, and that a pessimist lives in the past, but then who lives in the present? Surprisingly I think the answer to that question is the cynic because cynicism is by definition a method of interpreting the world in the moment based on prejudice and scepticism or to put it more bluntly they judge the world constantly. These three philosophical concepts whilst they may seem rigid should be recognised as negative by their definition, which at first might provoke disbelief, the idea of optimism being inherently negative seems like an oxymoron at first but when you frame it in the context of your consciousness it becomes apparent that optimism is a distraction as much as pessimism and cynicism are because all three are about displacing your consciousness. You are removed from the present and placed into a third person perspective in all three cases, one looking to the past, one to the present, and one to the future.
This raises the question of scales, if we believe that every action has an equal and opposite reaction then we can create a scale for every action that bridges the two, even if this scale only permits two values of 1 and -1. You then have to take each of these concepts and consider what their true opposites are if not those we have already outlined.
If we define pessimism as finding your happiest moment in your past, then finding your most unhappiest moment there too could arguably be defined as the opposing concept, there is no word that exists to specifically identify this behaviour so I am taking a word here that means something else but fits the narrative I have created, that word is 'traumatism' where the existing definition refers the development of trauma, in this context I am extending that definition to include the act of identifying moments as traumatic.
If we define cynicism as the displacement of the consciousness in the moment causing us to judge the experience rather than experience it for ourselves, then the opposing concept here would be the act of living in the moment without thinking about it - in psychology this is referred to as mindfulness or raising your awareness. Again to fit the narrative I have created, the word I would use to describe this mentality would be 'sporadicism' which I would define quite close to sporadism and sporadicity which are adjectives used to describe someone or something that is sporadic and unpredictable.
That leaves the future perspective, where optimism is the act of defining your happiest moment as something yet to occur, the opposite here would be defining your darkest moment as something yet to occur which again has a word used to describe it, 'neuroticism' which in turn serves as an identifier for most psychologists of the likelihood that certain disorders may develop that are associated with increasingly negative outlooks on the world, sometimes caused by cognitive processes and sometimes caused by neurological conditions.
To summarise:
Past:
Pessimism - your happiest moment is behind you
Traumatism - your worst moment happened in your past
Present:
Cynicism - judging the world and displacing your consciousness from it
Sporadicism - living in the moment without thinking about it at all
Future:
Optimisim - your happiest moment is yet to come
Neuroticism - your worst moment is yet to come
What I have realised through developing this classification system is that cynicism creates negative experiences which reinforce trauma and increase the likelihood of developing neurotic tendencies, and that sporadicism creates a mixture or positive and negative experiences which can rebalance your time-line. The more positive experiences that are created in the moment that in turn contribute to your past as you create it, lessen the impact and the magnitude of trauma reducing the likelihood of developing neurotic tendencies and creating space for optimism.
Ultimately the present is the only one of the three periods of time you can actually control, the divide between pessimism and optimism is therefore irrelevant. The only relevant question is whether you want to judge the present or engage with it, whichever you choose will feed your inclination towards pessimism or optimism in the long run, so whilst you can't abandon a pessimist or optimist mentality completely in the moment, you can steer yourself down a path that will eventually change that mentality.
Controversy
The word 'controversy' comes from the contraction of the latin words 'contra' meaning against, and 'vertere' meaning turn, the literal meaning is therefore 'to turn against' or in a more figurative manner, to go off script. Given this definition it is quite ironic that we live in a time where controversy is abhorred so greatly and that defence of the status quo is met with derogatory terms for being liberal as by definition defending the status quo is in fact an act of conservation.
I've been thinking about this a lot and the more I think about it the more it makes sense. At first you might protest the idea that those who call themselves conservative are actually liberal and those who call themselves liberal are actually conservative but take a step back and look at the ideological conflict that exists and certain things become apparent. It is often said that those who protest the most often protest that which they hate about themselves but cannot admit to - for example homophobic people tend to be repressing homosexual desires. A number of academic studies have been conducted testing this hypothesis with results that for the most part confirm this assertion.
When you venture into the realm of politics you are met with the same intense disdain for labels that individuals do not identify with being imposed upon them. There is something to be said here about whether those labels would be so irritable if they had no basis in truth. The most vehement objections I see in political discourse comes from individuals who protest a label which in reality fits quite well and vice versa from those who identify with a label that in reality does not fit them at all. I've written before about the nature of labels and how they really only serve a purpose for us to guide the expectations of others, that they have little to no purpose when it comes to defining ourselves. It is for this reason I don't personally care what people label me as because those labels determine where they put me in their internal filing system not how I identify myself.
The idea of controversy however in and of itself is inherently liberal because it represents the freedom to diverge from the prevailing discourse, conversely, the idea of zero tolerance to controversy is in and of itself inherently conservative because it defends the status quo to dogmatic proportions. Yet, it is conservative media outlets who purport most controversial news and information or misinformation or disinformation delete as appropriate depending on your ideology. Those media outlets that seek to keep things the way they are and promote the status quo and present government's version of events are labelled liberal by those media outlets.
This is of course all subjective because I haven't named a single media outlet above and I can tell you that I can name 1 of each above and identify individuals who would agree with my assessment, but then I can swap these media outlets around and I can also identify different individuals who would agree with that combination instead, the point here being that despite what we believe to be an objective point of view and an accurate assessment of the bias inherent and political ideology of an organisation, there will be others who will hold opposing views with the same determination.
How then you determine empirically which ideology they actually identify with? The key word here is "identify" and the point that needs to be made here is that "alignment" and "identity" are not the same thing. Alignment is objective and identity is subjective because the former is determined through a methodology whereas the latter is based on our perception of our self and the conclusions we draw. With this in mind to return once more to the idea of controversy, relative labels are defined by consensus, whatever the consensus believes determines their definition, not the individual. The ultimate take away here is that you should not shy away from controversy simply because it goes against the majority, you should evaluate it for yourself you might find that the definitions the majority use vary wildly from your own and those idea might not be controversial to you at all.
The horde mentality of humanity has been around for millennia, arguably it is the reason society and civilisation emerged to begin with, but if we all did the same thing, act the same way, and thought the same thoughts then we would have never moved forward as a race, we would have stayed in the same place and never advanced. Progress by its very definition must move beyond what already exists, progress by definition has to be controversial, you are going to have to disagree with people at some point.
I've been thinking about this a lot and the more I think about it the more it makes sense. At first you might protest the idea that those who call themselves conservative are actually liberal and those who call themselves liberal are actually conservative but take a step back and look at the ideological conflict that exists and certain things become apparent. It is often said that those who protest the most often protest that which they hate about themselves but cannot admit to - for example homophobic people tend to be repressing homosexual desires. A number of academic studies have been conducted testing this hypothesis with results that for the most part confirm this assertion.
When you venture into the realm of politics you are met with the same intense disdain for labels that individuals do not identify with being imposed upon them. There is something to be said here about whether those labels would be so irritable if they had no basis in truth. The most vehement objections I see in political discourse comes from individuals who protest a label which in reality fits quite well and vice versa from those who identify with a label that in reality does not fit them at all. I've written before about the nature of labels and how they really only serve a purpose for us to guide the expectations of others, that they have little to no purpose when it comes to defining ourselves. It is for this reason I don't personally care what people label me as because those labels determine where they put me in their internal filing system not how I identify myself.
The idea of controversy however in and of itself is inherently liberal because it represents the freedom to diverge from the prevailing discourse, conversely, the idea of zero tolerance to controversy is in and of itself inherently conservative because it defends the status quo to dogmatic proportions. Yet, it is conservative media outlets who purport most controversial news and information or misinformation or disinformation delete as appropriate depending on your ideology. Those media outlets that seek to keep things the way they are and promote the status quo and present government's version of events are labelled liberal by those media outlets.
This is of course all subjective because I haven't named a single media outlet above and I can tell you that I can name 1 of each above and identify individuals who would agree with my assessment, but then I can swap these media outlets around and I can also identify different individuals who would agree with that combination instead, the point here being that despite what we believe to be an objective point of view and an accurate assessment of the bias inherent and political ideology of an organisation, there will be others who will hold opposing views with the same determination.
How then you determine empirically which ideology they actually identify with? The key word here is "identify" and the point that needs to be made here is that "alignment" and "identity" are not the same thing. Alignment is objective and identity is subjective because the former is determined through a methodology whereas the latter is based on our perception of our self and the conclusions we draw. With this in mind to return once more to the idea of controversy, relative labels are defined by consensus, whatever the consensus believes determines their definition, not the individual. The ultimate take away here is that you should not shy away from controversy simply because it goes against the majority, you should evaluate it for yourself you might find that the definitions the majority use vary wildly from your own and those idea might not be controversial to you at all.
The horde mentality of humanity has been around for millennia, arguably it is the reason society and civilisation emerged to begin with, but if we all did the same thing, act the same way, and thought the same thoughts then we would have never moved forward as a race, we would have stayed in the same place and never advanced. Progress by its very definition must move beyond what already exists, progress by definition has to be controversial, you are going to have to disagree with people at some point.
Music Monday #10: Missundaztood by Pink
"Every day I fight a war against the mirror, I can't take the person starin' back at me, I'm a hazard to myself, Don't let me get me"
- 'Don't Let Me Get Me' - Pink
'Missundaztood' was released in 2001, a year that I've mentioned in a previous post in this series caused a lot of things in my life to change. At the risk of repeating what I have already said I will instead choose to say that as I went through changes in my life, I had a lot of internal conflict, different desires pulled me in opposite directions and I found it difficult to have anything to ground myself and depend on. 'Don't Let Me Get Me' reflects an acknowledgement that I had at that moment in my life that I could be my own worst nightmare and my own worst enemy, my greatest threat was myself. This time in my life is also close to a period I have spoken of in my post about suicide where my thoughts reached their darkest point.
As is almost a cliché for me at this point, when I couldn't process my thoughts or my feelings, music was the first place I turned to and Pink in particular served as an exquisite articulation of the anger and turmoil that raged within me at times. 'Just Like A Pill' and 'Family Portrait' also touched on some pretty raw emotions that I went through at the time, this was a time in my life where I wanted more than anything to run away from everything but as was often the case there was nowhere to run to - it's understandable how that realisation can make you turn inward and reach a very dark place in your mind.
Missundaztood as an album reflects something much deeper that I was struggling with at the time and that is my sexuality, I knew I was gay, that wasn't in question, I was certain of that at least, but nobody knew at the time and as I mentioned in a previous post in this series there was nobody that I felt I could turn to and be open and discuss what I was feeling with, at the age of 13 you're not old enough to be able to seek medical advice without your parents or guardian knowing and school counsellors were still bound by Section 28 so not even they were an option. I did a lot of things at that time in my life that I am grateful never left a mark physically but I would be lying if I said they didn't leave a mark you can't see. My thoughts at that moment represent a mentality that I have only returned to a few times now in my life and I'm still here for now at least.
There's more I could say about Pink and the influence she has had on my life, and the inspiration she has been, but spoilers, this isn't the only album of hers that will feature on this list, so I'll save my gushing for another post. What is important to say however is that Pink is part of the reason why I am still here, and I am grateful for her and her music, I'm quite certain I am not alone in this sentiment and I know from her interviews, her social media, and her commentary that she's aware of the impact she's had, she might not know the intimate details of every story but that's okay, she doesn't have to really, like many of the artists I have featured on this list all that I want is for them to be who they are because just being who they are is what has been an inspiration to me, anyone who lives their truth unapologetic is an inspiration.
On a more light-hearted note, there is a bonus track called 'Catch-22' which is included in the second UK edition of the album - the version I now have, this track makes me smile both for the spoken word parts and for the narrative of the lyrics "You're damned if you do, You're damned if you don't, We're always doing all the things, That we say we won't" and "You've seen all the signs, But you haven't got a clue" both of which just hit home how futile it can be trying to change things in your life, this touches on something much deeper about the nature of free will, that I will discuss in another post but for now it's suffice to say this highlights the despair at feeling like no matter what you do you still end up back where you started with the same problems all over again.
Missundaztood in retrospect was a seminal work for Pink, although it wasn't her debut album, for me it embodied more of what she would go on to achieve and what she would come to represent and serves as the foundation of her journey for me personally.
- 'Don't Let Me Get Me' - Pink
'Missundaztood' was released in 2001, a year that I've mentioned in a previous post in this series caused a lot of things in my life to change. At the risk of repeating what I have already said I will instead choose to say that as I went through changes in my life, I had a lot of internal conflict, different desires pulled me in opposite directions and I found it difficult to have anything to ground myself and depend on. 'Don't Let Me Get Me' reflects an acknowledgement that I had at that moment in my life that I could be my own worst nightmare and my own worst enemy, my greatest threat was myself. This time in my life is also close to a period I have spoken of in my post about suicide where my thoughts reached their darkest point.
As is almost a cliché for me at this point, when I couldn't process my thoughts or my feelings, music was the first place I turned to and Pink in particular served as an exquisite articulation of the anger and turmoil that raged within me at times. 'Just Like A Pill' and 'Family Portrait' also touched on some pretty raw emotions that I went through at the time, this was a time in my life where I wanted more than anything to run away from everything but as was often the case there was nowhere to run to - it's understandable how that realisation can make you turn inward and reach a very dark place in your mind.
Missundaztood as an album reflects something much deeper that I was struggling with at the time and that is my sexuality, I knew I was gay, that wasn't in question, I was certain of that at least, but nobody knew at the time and as I mentioned in a previous post in this series there was nobody that I felt I could turn to and be open and discuss what I was feeling with, at the age of 13 you're not old enough to be able to seek medical advice without your parents or guardian knowing and school counsellors were still bound by Section 28 so not even they were an option. I did a lot of things at that time in my life that I am grateful never left a mark physically but I would be lying if I said they didn't leave a mark you can't see. My thoughts at that moment represent a mentality that I have only returned to a few times now in my life and I'm still here for now at least.
There's more I could say about Pink and the influence she has had on my life, and the inspiration she has been, but spoilers, this isn't the only album of hers that will feature on this list, so I'll save my gushing for another post. What is important to say however is that Pink is part of the reason why I am still here, and I am grateful for her and her music, I'm quite certain I am not alone in this sentiment and I know from her interviews, her social media, and her commentary that she's aware of the impact she's had, she might not know the intimate details of every story but that's okay, she doesn't have to really, like many of the artists I have featured on this list all that I want is for them to be who they are because just being who they are is what has been an inspiration to me, anyone who lives their truth unapologetic is an inspiration.
On a more light-hearted note, there is a bonus track called 'Catch-22' which is included in the second UK edition of the album - the version I now have, this track makes me smile both for the spoken word parts and for the narrative of the lyrics "You're damned if you do, You're damned if you don't, We're always doing all the things, That we say we won't" and "You've seen all the signs, But you haven't got a clue" both of which just hit home how futile it can be trying to change things in your life, this touches on something much deeper about the nature of free will, that I will discuss in another post but for now it's suffice to say this highlights the despair at feeling like no matter what you do you still end up back where you started with the same problems all over again.
Missundaztood in retrospect was a seminal work for Pink, although it wasn't her debut album, for me it embodied more of what she would go on to achieve and what she would come to represent and serves as the foundation of her journey for me personally.
Not Enough Time
I recently had to fill in different forms for various things, the specifics of which aren't relevant, suffice to say one was 28 pages long, another 16, and the other two were single page forms. Despite the fact that I think this amount of paperwork is asinine and contributes so such waste and has so many negative impacts on the environment, they also have an impact on our mental health in more ways than we realise. Filling in a form in and of itself doesn't sound like strenuous work, and in the physical sense it isn't, but it is taxing in a mental sense even to an extent emotionally. The worst part about these forms is that they often ask you to provide information that by all accounts they should already have - any form that is for the purposes of renewing anything should really have a single page precursor that simply asks has anything changed and if the answer is no then take the previous submission as the template going forward.
Beyond the bureaucracy of this endeavour, the most frustrating part is perhaps not the forms themselves but the turnaround that goes with them. Two of these forms I can expect a reply within five weeks for each one, and the other two are open ended, I may not get any reply at all for those which makes planning difficult and for someone who suffers from anxiety like me it also creates a cloud of uncertainty that hangs above your head until you get an answer or until enough time has passed that you can become complacent and able to ignore that cloud.
Whilst it may be taxing to fill out a 28 page form which took 2 hours to complete, they are written forms that are submitted and manually reviewed and I know that the volume of submissions in this particular instance would be very high. This does make you realise the volume of work created by requiring this form be completed and submitted is not negligible. From my time working in administration I realised that much of the administrative work I undertook was by design created to create work. In other words, these policies, procedures, and systems were designed to make work for people not to be efficient. There were many areas where a simple single page form would have sufficed, and many more where making the entire process digital would have reduced the time it took to do the work substantially.
There has been a lot said in recent years about the impact of Artificial Intelligence and how it will change the world of work. The comment I hear most from people is that an AI could never do their work - this comment is usually arrogant and entirely misguided, most jobs could be automated even the ones you think only a human can do. Repetition is ultimately the key to automation, any job that involves doing the same thing all the time is ripe for automation. One might then ask why many jobs still exist and the simple answer I have to that question is that those jobs still exist for now because people need to be given something to do with their time.
We have been asking the question now for far too long of when AI will be disruptive, I think the question is no longer relevant, instead the real question now should be what will we do with our lives when we no longer have to work - if you can provide a definitive answer to that question and take steps to implement it then the pace at which AI takes over from us in the world of work will increase. Unions, Strikes, Industrial Disputes, and Political Opposition now stand as the main barriers to widespread automation, technology isn't the problem, it's ready and waiting to take our place, the problem is what to do with us.
If you've ever been made unemployed for an extended period of time, the first few weeks tend to be quite productive, which most people in work think is surprising but this productivity is largely the response of the bureaucratic systems in place that kick in when your employment status changes. Like a house when someone dies, the wake, and the funeral see the house overrun with visitors, relatives, and well-wishers, it's not until the days that follow when silence falls and you're left with the reality of life without the one you loved that your life changes. The same is true for loss of employment, it is not until several weeks have passed and what is defined as your new normal takes hold that you realise what your life is going to involve from then on.
After that initial transition period you set out to look for work and devote your time and energy to it but you can't look for a job 24/7 and with most applications once they are submitted they are out of your hands. If you live in an area with limited employment options its entirely conceivable that you will literally have applied for every suitable job you can find but what do you do with your time after that? This question is shared with that of a potential future world where work is no longer part of human society, what is left? For some the first response is education in whatever form is available, either structured or unstructured, guided or self guided, commercial or community and all that's in between. Is it reasonable or even possible to devote your life to education?
When you work full time you have a list of things you want to do but do not have the time to do, and when you do get free time you are often overcome with obligation or exhaustion, or even the desire to be as productive in your private life as you can be during that time, leaving little room for the pursuit of pleasure or that list of things you wanted to do. When you find yourself with no work to do for whatever reason and have the opportunity to tackle that list, it's often the case that within a few days, or weeks at most, you clear that list with the magnitude of the tasks being something you did not realise was so small in reality.
When you are left with nothing else to do, what do you resort to in the pursuit of pleasure? If the world existed without work, what would it resort to in turn? If the tongue in cheek answer was to say sex then entertain the thought for a moment of a world without work and what that would involve, would we end up fucking ourselves to death? Less droll perhaps is the response of eating or drinking but again the same question arises, in a world without work would we eat and drink ourselves to death? The real question that is being asked here by proxy is how much self control does humanity actually have and how much of our humorous attempts at finding moderation are actually the result of the restrictions work places upon us and our time or resources not because of our willpower.
Perhaps to put it bluntly, is the real reason you don't pursue those pleasures to the extreme simply because you have obligations and can't spare the resources in time, money, energy etc to pursue them? Is it then fair to say that the reason people who are unemployed at the moment within the current system don't pursue those pleasures to the extreme simply the result of the same restrictions imposed upon them by limiting resources? If one were to embrace a more Machiavellian mindset then one would have to ask if we are to transition to a world without work which will need to utilise restrictions as a means to control behaviour then what is going to happen between now and then to reduce the amount of resources we have access to?
Beyond the bureaucracy of this endeavour, the most frustrating part is perhaps not the forms themselves but the turnaround that goes with them. Two of these forms I can expect a reply within five weeks for each one, and the other two are open ended, I may not get any reply at all for those which makes planning difficult and for someone who suffers from anxiety like me it also creates a cloud of uncertainty that hangs above your head until you get an answer or until enough time has passed that you can become complacent and able to ignore that cloud.
Whilst it may be taxing to fill out a 28 page form which took 2 hours to complete, they are written forms that are submitted and manually reviewed and I know that the volume of submissions in this particular instance would be very high. This does make you realise the volume of work created by requiring this form be completed and submitted is not negligible. From my time working in administration I realised that much of the administrative work I undertook was by design created to create work. In other words, these policies, procedures, and systems were designed to make work for people not to be efficient. There were many areas where a simple single page form would have sufficed, and many more where making the entire process digital would have reduced the time it took to do the work substantially.
There has been a lot said in recent years about the impact of Artificial Intelligence and how it will change the world of work. The comment I hear most from people is that an AI could never do their work - this comment is usually arrogant and entirely misguided, most jobs could be automated even the ones you think only a human can do. Repetition is ultimately the key to automation, any job that involves doing the same thing all the time is ripe for automation. One might then ask why many jobs still exist and the simple answer I have to that question is that those jobs still exist for now because people need to be given something to do with their time.
We have been asking the question now for far too long of when AI will be disruptive, I think the question is no longer relevant, instead the real question now should be what will we do with our lives when we no longer have to work - if you can provide a definitive answer to that question and take steps to implement it then the pace at which AI takes over from us in the world of work will increase. Unions, Strikes, Industrial Disputes, and Political Opposition now stand as the main barriers to widespread automation, technology isn't the problem, it's ready and waiting to take our place, the problem is what to do with us.
If you've ever been made unemployed for an extended period of time, the first few weeks tend to be quite productive, which most people in work think is surprising but this productivity is largely the response of the bureaucratic systems in place that kick in when your employment status changes. Like a house when someone dies, the wake, and the funeral see the house overrun with visitors, relatives, and well-wishers, it's not until the days that follow when silence falls and you're left with the reality of life without the one you loved that your life changes. The same is true for loss of employment, it is not until several weeks have passed and what is defined as your new normal takes hold that you realise what your life is going to involve from then on.
After that initial transition period you set out to look for work and devote your time and energy to it but you can't look for a job 24/7 and with most applications once they are submitted they are out of your hands. If you live in an area with limited employment options its entirely conceivable that you will literally have applied for every suitable job you can find but what do you do with your time after that? This question is shared with that of a potential future world where work is no longer part of human society, what is left? For some the first response is education in whatever form is available, either structured or unstructured, guided or self guided, commercial or community and all that's in between. Is it reasonable or even possible to devote your life to education?
When you work full time you have a list of things you want to do but do not have the time to do, and when you do get free time you are often overcome with obligation or exhaustion, or even the desire to be as productive in your private life as you can be during that time, leaving little room for the pursuit of pleasure or that list of things you wanted to do. When you find yourself with no work to do for whatever reason and have the opportunity to tackle that list, it's often the case that within a few days, or weeks at most, you clear that list with the magnitude of the tasks being something you did not realise was so small in reality.
When you are left with nothing else to do, what do you resort to in the pursuit of pleasure? If the world existed without work, what would it resort to in turn? If the tongue in cheek answer was to say sex then entertain the thought for a moment of a world without work and what that would involve, would we end up fucking ourselves to death? Less droll perhaps is the response of eating or drinking but again the same question arises, in a world without work would we eat and drink ourselves to death? The real question that is being asked here by proxy is how much self control does humanity actually have and how much of our humorous attempts at finding moderation are actually the result of the restrictions work places upon us and our time or resources not because of our willpower.
Perhaps to put it bluntly, is the real reason you don't pursue those pleasures to the extreme simply because you have obligations and can't spare the resources in time, money, energy etc to pursue them? Is it then fair to say that the reason people who are unemployed at the moment within the current system don't pursue those pleasures to the extreme simply the result of the same restrictions imposed upon them by limiting resources? If one were to embrace a more Machiavellian mindset then one would have to ask if we are to transition to a world without work which will need to utilise restrictions as a means to control behaviour then what is going to happen between now and then to reduce the amount of resources we have access to?
Wisdom
Wisdom is a complex concept for humans to understand. We all share a nebulous definition of what wisdom is but when you try to define it in absolute terms, the consensus breaks down. It seems we can only share the concept of wisdom when we point to it vaguely but we are not able to look at it directly. For me, I define wisdom as the combination of knowledge and experience. By extension I define knowledge as information with comprehension, and I define experience as everything we have been through in our lives, it's not always relevant to include everything.
Knowledge only comes with comprehension, without that level of understanding it is nothing more than information which in itself is just data with context provided. Richard Feynman once said that in order to be able to effectively process life in itself we as humans need hierarchies to exist, this in essence encapsulates the concept of abstraction, whereby it is not necessary to understand how something works all you need to know is how to use it; Feynman spoke of how it is possible to take any concept and break it down and continue to break it down until you trace it back to the fundamental laws of physics but that the connections are not always clear and you often find that the more precisely you try to define something in terms of fundamental laws the harder that actually becomes because many of the fundamental laws in themselves only hold up to a certain level of scrutiny because they too incorporate a certain level of abstraction and the closer you examine these the more traditional models start to break down and why new models are needed to explain what is happening.
The idea of being able to impart wisdom is something that I believe many philosophers devoted their entire lives to the study of, in the hopes of finding a simple method; this has not yet yielded effective results and I think the reason for this is because wisdom is not discrete. By this I mean that wisdom is actually a compound variable, comprised of knowledge and experience as I said above, but that efforts to impart wisdom have failed because they focus on imparting the knowledge contained within wisdom and although they attempt to share experience it is ultimately impossible to share the latter. I believe this because experience is inherently intimate, it is your interpretation and your conclusion based on that interpretation. Wisdom in this regard I therefore feel is only ever truly shared when the recipient already has the experience required and need only the knowledge to combine with it to make the whole and reveal the wisdom. This incidentally is the same asymmetrical process that is employed in public key encryption in effect, the recipient only receives the encrypted data and the public key, they must already possess their own private key to be able to decrypt what they receive.
Without recognising the value of personal experience and the importance thereof, we end up doing a disservice to people by trying to impart wisdom before they experience the situations that wisdom relates to, this in effect can be seen through parents who try to prevent their children making the same mistakes they made when they were young by imparting the wisdom they gained - the reason this fails miserably and those children still make the same mistakes is because the experience although recounted cannot be given to another person. They only receive the knowledge but not the experience needed to accept that wisdom.
I offer advice when people ask me for it, but I don't expect anyone to actually act based on what I say because I know they will likely only agree with me if they have shared the same experiences that I have had, and that consequently the action they take would therefore still be the action they would have taken had I never shared my thoughts. I learned the hard way that advice when asked for is not asked for out of a need for direction, but is rather asked for out of the desire to know if others think or feel the same way as they do. You should feel no personal affront if someone asks for your advice and then does not take it, instead you should be confident that they will gain their own experience and in time they will either come to agree with the advice you gave even if they didn't take it, or they will still disagree with it but have attained their own wisdom in the process which will guide them in making their own choices in future.
I've come to understand that as I have said many times, two people can go through the same thing and come out the other side with completely different conclusions, that this doesn't mean that one is right and one is wrong, but that both can be right when correlated with their prior experience, or that both can be wrong, the validity of perception and interpretation is defined by the individual, not by the observer. This is perhaps best demonstrated for me personally by the disparity that I often experience when other people wrongfully conclude that something means more to me than it actually does. I am an incredibly curious person and I ask a lot of questions to gain an understanding, it is often the case that my questioning therefore is simply an attempt to make sense of a decision or an experience that I don't understand. This intense interest however is often misinterpreted as an investment in the decision itself or the experience itself and perceived as judgement by the other person.
To this end, I think a lot of people would be quite surprised by how little emotional investment I have in the things I show interest in. This blog is another example of this in practice. I pick apart ideas and concepts and break them down, and it is often the case that the most complex and most nebulous ideas are the ones that I return to time and again to dive into, this interest however is borne out of the depth of pool I dive into, not out of a great emotional connection. Religion for example is something I have written about, but despite the depths that I have explored the concept with in my own mind and in my own research and study over the years, that drive is borne more out of curiosity than anything else. To assume there is a great emotional attachment would be misguided. Likewise I discuss politics quite a lot with people because I find the depth to which you can pick it apart to be appealing, again not because of any emotional attachment.
Knowledge was once my aspiration as a child, to know everything I could about everything, I soon realised that was not possible because of the volume of knowledge that existed so I chose to learn as much as I could about the things that interested me and a little about everything else. However with age I realised that amassing vast amounts of knowledge even that centred around specific topics was not in itself worthwhile because there was no purpose to that pursuit. I have lived a life where I have experiences that I have had, my pursuit of knowledge now, and the depth to which I pick things apart and play Devil's Advocate are driven by a desire to extract wisdom from my experiences by combining what knowledge I have attained with those experiences= in the pursuit of greater truth, or to return to Feynman's approach of hierarchy, my interest is not to descend through the hierarchies but to ascend instead as high as I can reach.
Knowledge only comes with comprehension, without that level of understanding it is nothing more than information which in itself is just data with context provided. Richard Feynman once said that in order to be able to effectively process life in itself we as humans need hierarchies to exist, this in essence encapsulates the concept of abstraction, whereby it is not necessary to understand how something works all you need to know is how to use it; Feynman spoke of how it is possible to take any concept and break it down and continue to break it down until you trace it back to the fundamental laws of physics but that the connections are not always clear and you often find that the more precisely you try to define something in terms of fundamental laws the harder that actually becomes because many of the fundamental laws in themselves only hold up to a certain level of scrutiny because they too incorporate a certain level of abstraction and the closer you examine these the more traditional models start to break down and why new models are needed to explain what is happening.
The idea of being able to impart wisdom is something that I believe many philosophers devoted their entire lives to the study of, in the hopes of finding a simple method; this has not yet yielded effective results and I think the reason for this is because wisdom is not discrete. By this I mean that wisdom is actually a compound variable, comprised of knowledge and experience as I said above, but that efforts to impart wisdom have failed because they focus on imparting the knowledge contained within wisdom and although they attempt to share experience it is ultimately impossible to share the latter. I believe this because experience is inherently intimate, it is your interpretation and your conclusion based on that interpretation. Wisdom in this regard I therefore feel is only ever truly shared when the recipient already has the experience required and need only the knowledge to combine with it to make the whole and reveal the wisdom. This incidentally is the same asymmetrical process that is employed in public key encryption in effect, the recipient only receives the encrypted data and the public key, they must already possess their own private key to be able to decrypt what they receive.
Without recognising the value of personal experience and the importance thereof, we end up doing a disservice to people by trying to impart wisdom before they experience the situations that wisdom relates to, this in effect can be seen through parents who try to prevent their children making the same mistakes they made when they were young by imparting the wisdom they gained - the reason this fails miserably and those children still make the same mistakes is because the experience although recounted cannot be given to another person. They only receive the knowledge but not the experience needed to accept that wisdom.
I offer advice when people ask me for it, but I don't expect anyone to actually act based on what I say because I know they will likely only agree with me if they have shared the same experiences that I have had, and that consequently the action they take would therefore still be the action they would have taken had I never shared my thoughts. I learned the hard way that advice when asked for is not asked for out of a need for direction, but is rather asked for out of the desire to know if others think or feel the same way as they do. You should feel no personal affront if someone asks for your advice and then does not take it, instead you should be confident that they will gain their own experience and in time they will either come to agree with the advice you gave even if they didn't take it, or they will still disagree with it but have attained their own wisdom in the process which will guide them in making their own choices in future.
I've come to understand that as I have said many times, two people can go through the same thing and come out the other side with completely different conclusions, that this doesn't mean that one is right and one is wrong, but that both can be right when correlated with their prior experience, or that both can be wrong, the validity of perception and interpretation is defined by the individual, not by the observer. This is perhaps best demonstrated for me personally by the disparity that I often experience when other people wrongfully conclude that something means more to me than it actually does. I am an incredibly curious person and I ask a lot of questions to gain an understanding, it is often the case that my questioning therefore is simply an attempt to make sense of a decision or an experience that I don't understand. This intense interest however is often misinterpreted as an investment in the decision itself or the experience itself and perceived as judgement by the other person.
To this end, I think a lot of people would be quite surprised by how little emotional investment I have in the things I show interest in. This blog is another example of this in practice. I pick apart ideas and concepts and break them down, and it is often the case that the most complex and most nebulous ideas are the ones that I return to time and again to dive into, this interest however is borne out of the depth of pool I dive into, not out of a great emotional connection. Religion for example is something I have written about, but despite the depths that I have explored the concept with in my own mind and in my own research and study over the years, that drive is borne more out of curiosity than anything else. To assume there is a great emotional attachment would be misguided. Likewise I discuss politics quite a lot with people because I find the depth to which you can pick it apart to be appealing, again not because of any emotional attachment.
Knowledge was once my aspiration as a child, to know everything I could about everything, I soon realised that was not possible because of the volume of knowledge that existed so I chose to learn as much as I could about the things that interested me and a little about everything else. However with age I realised that amassing vast amounts of knowledge even that centred around specific topics was not in itself worthwhile because there was no purpose to that pursuit. I have lived a life where I have experiences that I have had, my pursuit of knowledge now, and the depth to which I pick things apart and play Devil's Advocate are driven by a desire to extract wisdom from my experiences by combining what knowledge I have attained with those experiences= in the pursuit of greater truth, or to return to Feynman's approach of hierarchy, my interest is not to descend through the hierarchies but to ascend instead as high as I can reach.
Original Thought
I've been thinking a lot about the concepts of original thought and the origin of thought lately. In my posts about Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, one of the techniques I mentioned involves taking our thoughts and our beliefs in the moment and deconstructing them, asking the question "Why do I think that?" repeatedly helps us trace back the origin of our thoughts and our beliefs to see where they formed, what or who influenced those beliefs and how they have served us. Throughout this process you often discover that certain beliefs develop as the result of life experiences; those experiences however can often be interpreted in different ways and looking back on them with a new perspective and a new set of experiences that happened since can completely change the conclusions that we drew in the first place.
Two people can experience the same thing and walk away from it with completely different perspectives and wildly differing conclusions that they drew, the purpose of CBT in this scenario is to put your beliefs into context and put the original experiences into the context that you can now perceive that you could not at the time and see what changes. Whilst this can have real world implications, and implications for our own mental health, one of the things I found interesting when exploring this technique was the idea of original thought, that is to say thoughts that occur to you without the influence of others, is in fact extremely rare. There will be a lot of people who will take issue with this assertion but I believe most of the opposition to this idea stems from ego and not from an objective stance.
I've written in the past about the nature of tropes in fiction and in the creative process of writing where whether intentional or not, most works of fiction can be broken down into components that are shared with other works of fiction. I've also spoken about the rabbit hole you can fall down if you visit sites like TVTropes which document these in great detail, the plenitude of lists that abound with each article showing examples of those tropes in practice. This concept however is one you can extend to life itself and in particular apply it to human behaviour, speech patterns, vocal inflections, and the development of beliefs, desires, and intentions.
When you turn to introspection with such depth and develop many hypotheses about your own behaviour it is inevitable that you will seek more data to test your theories and that inescapably leads to increased observation and judgement of those around you, friends, family, and strangers who you regularly interact with. You reach a point where you become aware of others behaviour with a level of consciousness that is heightened. Like that moment where you start to notice your own breathing and suddenly have to pay attention to it and maintain the process, unable to consciously resume that automatic function. When you are in this state of mind you start to listen to people in a new and interesting way, not just hearing what they say and taking it in, but noticing the inflections, the pauses, the gesticulations, the mannerisms that you otherwise don't dwell on. You also begin to notice patterns in speech where you realise that certain subjects come up time and again and realise those form a foundation for interaction with others for those individuals.
The most interesting part about this whole observational process is when you identify beliefs or rhetoric specifically that are rigid or that conform to an existing framework. In these moments certain phrases or the choice of words a person uses hint at the origin of those thoughts and you begin to realise who exactly influences their behaviour. There is a theory that in a social context everyone in the world can be connected through six steps or less known as the six degrees of separation. When you take this theory in parallel to this observation you begin to realise that there are only a handful or prominent public figures, celebrities, and those in the public eye who speak with their own voice and that most peoples' articulations, their vocabulary, and their lexicon in general are an extension of one or more of those individuals.
This puts you in a very interesting place when it comes to arguments and debates that arise between you and those people, you begin to realise that to argue with those people is by extension or by proxy an act of arguing with the person that influenced them, and that even if you can put forward successful arguments that convince that person to change their point of view, you don't by extension change the source and that source will continue to influence that person and inevitably the person you managed to convince will once again succumb to the views of the source. To put it another way the source is a fire burning up on the roof of the building, and the embers that fall from it ignite those below, if you only ever extinguish the fires below without ever extinguishing the fire on the roof then the building will continue to burn because those embers will continue to fall.
Realising therefore that arguing with these people achieves nothing, the question then turns to whether you can tackle the source and unfortunately in most cases you can't for the simple reason that you'll never get anywhere near it in order to do that. This does lead to an internal conflict where on one hand you want to challenge these beliefs and contribute to the fight against them but on the other you realise this for the most part is futile.
The idea that most thoughts formed in a social context within the social constructs that exist all stem from a handful of people makes some sense when you consider the world and the seemingly synchronised movements that occur. Whilst we like to divide ourselves into nations, cultures, race, and all manner of human constructed segregations the reality is that we share the same planet and we share the same culture the whole world over, yes those subdivisions exist and they can cause problems in themselves but taking the idea that we are removed from each other and not influenced by one another is asinine and in many ways arrogant.
Those who would divide us, do so in order to control who can influence us, whose voice we hear and whether or not we listen, on the flip side those who would unite us attempt to do so through counter culture and opposing arguments which do not achieve their stated goal, the only way to achieve true unity in this regard is through inclusion, when you can bring together all of the voices of influence but this idea is still obstinately opposed by those who can not countenance including those whose opinions differ markedly from their own, and this applies to all points on the political compass. The 20th century is often cited by some as one of the longest periods of peace in our history particularly in a European context, with the end of the second world war there emerged a united political consensus one where almost all voices of influence save a few were in favour of the same thing, this came to an end when a handful of prominent politicians abandoned this discourse.
The world as it exists today is therefore the result of the actions and the influence of far fewer people than it first appears to be. Those who argue therefore that public figures and celebrities who seemingly have no political experience should stay out of politics are making a massive error in judgement. To counter the prevailing mood of the world today and shift our discourse back to consensus we need more people to be vocal, we need everyone who has influence to use that influence, failure to do so out of fear is what got us to this point in the first place, those who are not happy with the state of the world need to be vocal and that sadly applies most of all not to you and me but to that small group of people who most people in the world watch so closely. I have stated many times before that I hate 'X Factor Politics' where popularity determines success but that is the world we live in no matter how much we me protest the idea we still engage in it whether we are willing to admit it or not, this is a game that can only be played with strategy, and it is impossible to develop a winning strategy without identifying the rules of the game. You can only rewrite those rules when you have power, if you want to rewrite those rules from opposition then you need to amass power first.
Two people can experience the same thing and walk away from it with completely different perspectives and wildly differing conclusions that they drew, the purpose of CBT in this scenario is to put your beliefs into context and put the original experiences into the context that you can now perceive that you could not at the time and see what changes. Whilst this can have real world implications, and implications for our own mental health, one of the things I found interesting when exploring this technique was the idea of original thought, that is to say thoughts that occur to you without the influence of others, is in fact extremely rare. There will be a lot of people who will take issue with this assertion but I believe most of the opposition to this idea stems from ego and not from an objective stance.
I've written in the past about the nature of tropes in fiction and in the creative process of writing where whether intentional or not, most works of fiction can be broken down into components that are shared with other works of fiction. I've also spoken about the rabbit hole you can fall down if you visit sites like TVTropes which document these in great detail, the plenitude of lists that abound with each article showing examples of those tropes in practice. This concept however is one you can extend to life itself and in particular apply it to human behaviour, speech patterns, vocal inflections, and the development of beliefs, desires, and intentions.
When you turn to introspection with such depth and develop many hypotheses about your own behaviour it is inevitable that you will seek more data to test your theories and that inescapably leads to increased observation and judgement of those around you, friends, family, and strangers who you regularly interact with. You reach a point where you become aware of others behaviour with a level of consciousness that is heightened. Like that moment where you start to notice your own breathing and suddenly have to pay attention to it and maintain the process, unable to consciously resume that automatic function. When you are in this state of mind you start to listen to people in a new and interesting way, not just hearing what they say and taking it in, but noticing the inflections, the pauses, the gesticulations, the mannerisms that you otherwise don't dwell on. You also begin to notice patterns in speech where you realise that certain subjects come up time and again and realise those form a foundation for interaction with others for those individuals.
The most interesting part about this whole observational process is when you identify beliefs or rhetoric specifically that are rigid or that conform to an existing framework. In these moments certain phrases or the choice of words a person uses hint at the origin of those thoughts and you begin to realise who exactly influences their behaviour. There is a theory that in a social context everyone in the world can be connected through six steps or less known as the six degrees of separation. When you take this theory in parallel to this observation you begin to realise that there are only a handful or prominent public figures, celebrities, and those in the public eye who speak with their own voice and that most peoples' articulations, their vocabulary, and their lexicon in general are an extension of one or more of those individuals.
This puts you in a very interesting place when it comes to arguments and debates that arise between you and those people, you begin to realise that to argue with those people is by extension or by proxy an act of arguing with the person that influenced them, and that even if you can put forward successful arguments that convince that person to change their point of view, you don't by extension change the source and that source will continue to influence that person and inevitably the person you managed to convince will once again succumb to the views of the source. To put it another way the source is a fire burning up on the roof of the building, and the embers that fall from it ignite those below, if you only ever extinguish the fires below without ever extinguishing the fire on the roof then the building will continue to burn because those embers will continue to fall.
Realising therefore that arguing with these people achieves nothing, the question then turns to whether you can tackle the source and unfortunately in most cases you can't for the simple reason that you'll never get anywhere near it in order to do that. This does lead to an internal conflict where on one hand you want to challenge these beliefs and contribute to the fight against them but on the other you realise this for the most part is futile.
The idea that most thoughts formed in a social context within the social constructs that exist all stem from a handful of people makes some sense when you consider the world and the seemingly synchronised movements that occur. Whilst we like to divide ourselves into nations, cultures, race, and all manner of human constructed segregations the reality is that we share the same planet and we share the same culture the whole world over, yes those subdivisions exist and they can cause problems in themselves but taking the idea that we are removed from each other and not influenced by one another is asinine and in many ways arrogant.
Those who would divide us, do so in order to control who can influence us, whose voice we hear and whether or not we listen, on the flip side those who would unite us attempt to do so through counter culture and opposing arguments which do not achieve their stated goal, the only way to achieve true unity in this regard is through inclusion, when you can bring together all of the voices of influence but this idea is still obstinately opposed by those who can not countenance including those whose opinions differ markedly from their own, and this applies to all points on the political compass. The 20th century is often cited by some as one of the longest periods of peace in our history particularly in a European context, with the end of the second world war there emerged a united political consensus one where almost all voices of influence save a few were in favour of the same thing, this came to an end when a handful of prominent politicians abandoned this discourse.
The world as it exists today is therefore the result of the actions and the influence of far fewer people than it first appears to be. Those who argue therefore that public figures and celebrities who seemingly have no political experience should stay out of politics are making a massive error in judgement. To counter the prevailing mood of the world today and shift our discourse back to consensus we need more people to be vocal, we need everyone who has influence to use that influence, failure to do so out of fear is what got us to this point in the first place, those who are not happy with the state of the world need to be vocal and that sadly applies most of all not to you and me but to that small group of people who most people in the world watch so closely. I have stated many times before that I hate 'X Factor Politics' where popularity determines success but that is the world we live in no matter how much we me protest the idea we still engage in it whether we are willing to admit it or not, this is a game that can only be played with strategy, and it is impossible to develop a winning strategy without identifying the rules of the game. You can only rewrite those rules when you have power, if you want to rewrite those rules from opposition then you need to amass power first.
Music Monday #9: The Best of M People
1998 saw the release of 'The Best of M People' the greatest hits album of M People. It's hard to describe what type of music M People sing, the front-woman and lead singer, Heather Small is without a doubt a national treasure. Her vocal styling can be described as a mix of pop and soul, whilst the musical styling of M People in general lean towards House music, a genre of music I have explored given its links to the Electronic Dance Music [EDM] scene and the influence it has over EDM and Trance music. The evolution of EDM in general is something that fascinates me, although no definitive source exists in my eyes that tells the complete story. What's clear however is that House Music shaped the genre from its nascence through to its formative years and still shapes the genre as a whole today.
Heather Small has a voice that is anything but small, she is uplifting, inspiring, and energetic in a way that isn't exhausting. I would describe M People and the style of music they produced as easy listening, although that in itself is a specific genre which I won't get into right now. I chose the greatest hits album again so I didn't have to include every album they released. I can't pick a single track on the album as my favourite so I'll opt for a two way tie between 'Angel Street' and 'Fantasy Island' both of which hold a narrative structure depicting idyllic worlds. M People have always been a band that I've turned to when I need to unwind, when I want to feel good, when I feel drained and just want to let go for a while.
I was only 10 years old when this album was released and although I loved the music right from the jump it wouldn't be until several years later when I would begin to truly appreciate it. M People produced music that was universal, inclusive, and open to all, but with undertones and subtlety that you only begin to appreciate fully when the world has had its way with you. 'Angel Street' exemplifies this to me, a track that I loved as soon as I heard it but with lyrics that didn't sink in for me fully until my late teens when I started to see the world for what it really was, when the false promises were exposed and I woke up to the lies that you're fed. The lyric "If you think the World owes you a ride, you'll never find the reason why" puts this as directly as you can get, the world is what you make of it, they say good things come to those who wait but that's just not true in reality, if you wait they'll pass you by, you have to put in some effort into achieving the things you want.
I must say again that I realise that my younger self had a lot more things figured out than I do now, in many ways I have regressed in my mentality, backing off from the beliefs that drove me forward giving up on them and swapping them for a set of beliefs that only managed to ground me firmly in place and stopping me from moving forward. I've been making efforts to undo that regression however, the posts relating to cognitive behavioural therapy on this blog are just the surface of the work I am putting in to reshaping my life. This album serves as a reminder of the mentality I abandoned and in many ways it serves as an aspiration, an objective for me to strive once more to reach. Everything in my life right now revolves around the concepts of context and resistance, the former helping me to frame my thoughts to prevent negative mentalities taking hold and the latter helping me determine or divine where my true nature lies. I still don't know for sure where that is but what I do know is that this album and the mentality that it reflects stands as a testament to the mentality that prevailed for me when I fought myself the least and went with my nature, I don't think that would be a bad place to start to try and rebuild from.
Not my favourite track on the album but well worth a mention is 'Search For The Hero' an exquisite song that still holds a special place in my heart, and one that holds a special place in the hearts of many British people. This track has been used over the years many times, in promotional material for various companies, organisations, and charities events, this track together with with 'Proud' a solo single released by Heather in 2000 which went on to become the London 2012 Olympic bid are the two tracks M People and Heather Small specifically are best known for.
The Best of M People serves as an example of an album I like to listen to when I don't want to think about life, this is a mentality that I share with EDM and Trance music, each specific genre of EDM hold an appeal for me each associated with a different state of mind that I either want to escape or embrace. This is also one of those albums I never want to lose because I never grow tired of it, there is a comfort in Heather's voice and a reassurance that can be hard to find in life at times.
Heather Small has a voice that is anything but small, she is uplifting, inspiring, and energetic in a way that isn't exhausting. I would describe M People and the style of music they produced as easy listening, although that in itself is a specific genre which I won't get into right now. I chose the greatest hits album again so I didn't have to include every album they released. I can't pick a single track on the album as my favourite so I'll opt for a two way tie between 'Angel Street' and 'Fantasy Island' both of which hold a narrative structure depicting idyllic worlds. M People have always been a band that I've turned to when I need to unwind, when I want to feel good, when I feel drained and just want to let go for a while.
I was only 10 years old when this album was released and although I loved the music right from the jump it wouldn't be until several years later when I would begin to truly appreciate it. M People produced music that was universal, inclusive, and open to all, but with undertones and subtlety that you only begin to appreciate fully when the world has had its way with you. 'Angel Street' exemplifies this to me, a track that I loved as soon as I heard it but with lyrics that didn't sink in for me fully until my late teens when I started to see the world for what it really was, when the false promises were exposed and I woke up to the lies that you're fed. The lyric "If you think the World owes you a ride, you'll never find the reason why" puts this as directly as you can get, the world is what you make of it, they say good things come to those who wait but that's just not true in reality, if you wait they'll pass you by, you have to put in some effort into achieving the things you want.
I must say again that I realise that my younger self had a lot more things figured out than I do now, in many ways I have regressed in my mentality, backing off from the beliefs that drove me forward giving up on them and swapping them for a set of beliefs that only managed to ground me firmly in place and stopping me from moving forward. I've been making efforts to undo that regression however, the posts relating to cognitive behavioural therapy on this blog are just the surface of the work I am putting in to reshaping my life. This album serves as a reminder of the mentality I abandoned and in many ways it serves as an aspiration, an objective for me to strive once more to reach. Everything in my life right now revolves around the concepts of context and resistance, the former helping me to frame my thoughts to prevent negative mentalities taking hold and the latter helping me determine or divine where my true nature lies. I still don't know for sure where that is but what I do know is that this album and the mentality that it reflects stands as a testament to the mentality that prevailed for me when I fought myself the least and went with my nature, I don't think that would be a bad place to start to try and rebuild from.
Not my favourite track on the album but well worth a mention is 'Search For The Hero' an exquisite song that still holds a special place in my heart, and one that holds a special place in the hearts of many British people. This track has been used over the years many times, in promotional material for various companies, organisations, and charities events, this track together with with 'Proud' a solo single released by Heather in 2000 which went on to become the London 2012 Olympic bid are the two tracks M People and Heather Small specifically are best known for.
The Best of M People serves as an example of an album I like to listen to when I don't want to think about life, this is a mentality that I share with EDM and Trance music, each specific genre of EDM hold an appeal for me each associated with a different state of mind that I either want to escape or embrace. This is also one of those albums I never want to lose because I never grow tired of it, there is a comfort in Heather's voice and a reassurance that can be hard to find in life at times.
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